Jean and Lauren have said goodbye to Mimi and Helen and thankfully have decided stay on for an extra week in Tipperary so Bibi finally is finally getting to see Lauren! Laytown was great and I really appreciate everyone’s help in looking after Jean when she was so sick. A building site is no place to be at a time like this even if I am missing them and want them to come home. Hopefully things will be a little more civilised in the house by the time they get back!
I managed to blow two full days chasing a passport for this little one! Most of it spent trying to get a decent passport photo! I took Lauren to two local chemists trying to get photos taken and had the first set rejected when I got to Molesworth St. Excuses included “this camera doesn’t have a setting for babies…..”. Finally I had to get out my own camera. The passport office will reject photos if the subject is not looking directly at the camera, with eyes open, wearing a neutral expression with mouth closed. Not easy with a permanently sleepy baby.
There’s dirt and filth everywhere, all our stuff still layered in dust despite being hidden under dust sheets. Thank God Jean and the kids are in Ireland as this is really tough.
However Jean is not doing very well – she’s picked up every post-partum infection known to Woman and is really tired and stressed looking after Sophie and Lauren. I’m going back there on Wednesday night to help out and drive her back home. Lauren is aparently doing well – should be a huge difference when I see her over a week on!
The Basement guys are making progress – they’ve stripped the basement and dug out most of the area under the dining room. They’re just getting started with underpinning which involves digging one metre square pits alternately around the perimeter and building up to the foundation level. They are on site having a cup of tea at 7:00 when I am only getting up and by the time I leave at around 9 the place is thronged with workmen all bumping into each other in the hallways. I’ve got two guys with jackhammers in the basement. I’ve got two or three plumbers installing a boiler on the second floor, decomissioning gas and all the other old lead pipework and crap that is strung through the house and rehanging the radiators. Then I’ve got another two electricians completly rewiring the house top to bottom, sorting out cat5 cabling and tv/aerial connections. Hopefully they will be done by the weekend.
Did I mention the cold showers? No heating and no hot water for a week! This is an unusually long wait but purely of my own making. I have specified the most complicated route for the ducting from the boiler which is centre of house and against a party wall. It has to come out the top, wind around the ceiling of the walk-in wardrobe/hot press to the opposite side, then go up through the bathroom above and out through the roof. Cost of ducting alone is £800 but hopefully worth it for a clean installation.
The electrics I am much happier with. The house had about three generations of electrics and a crazy bakelite and barbed wire fuseboard on each floor. Now we will have a bang up-to-date system with the consumer unit in the basement area. The walk-in wardrobe space on the first floor (which I am going to have to settle on a consistent name for) will house the wireless router, network storage and telephone point. Cat5 goes from here to the livingroom, kitchen, basement, bedroom 1 and the new study room on the 2nd floor. Of course I have to terminate the network cabling myself as the electrician can only lay the cable, so it could be a protracted period of trial and error to get it right.
The buliding – or more accurately, demolition – work has begun. Jean, Sophie and Lauren are safely back in Ireland while this is going on but I am faced with a cold shower in the morning. The top-floor bathroom has been stripped and will be divided into a small shower room and a study (with three girls in the house I am going to need a retreat however small!). The builder ceiling has also been stripped and will be vaulted directly upwards to a large velux window.
The rest of the house is being completely rewired – all sockets and switches being replaced, ethernet cable being installed, and new sat/tv sockets being wired.
The cellar has also been emptied and some of the internal walls taken out – I’ll put some more pics up in the next few days.
Well we have left Jean and Lauren to hopefully a quiet night in hospital. All seemed quiet when we visited with Sophie, Mimi and Grandad. Sophie was great – very interested in the baby and keen to get involved in dressing her and looking after her. Lets see how long that lasts! Anyway, it was a great experience for us, brilliant for the folks to be present for their third grandchild’s birth – the first time they’ve even been in the same country! Lauren is very like Sophie but dark haired. Sophie was 3kgs and Lauren beat with 3.2kg – although only by staying inside for an extra 5 days which is cheating.
So here are a selection of pics from today.
Adam
